Dinner Speaker: Susan Maushart

The Total Bitch's Guide to Work Life Balance

Columnist, author and social commentator Dr. Susan Maushart moved to Perth, Western Australia from New York 19 years ago but insists she is only passing through. A recovering academic, she has worked as a communications consultant, television news reporter, stand-up comedy writer and freelance wife.

Susan has given birth to four books and three children, and has needed copious amounts of pain relief for all of them. Her essays and reviews have appeared in a host of Australian and international publications, and she is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Media, Society and Culture at Curtin University.

She lives in Fremantle with her partner, six teenagers and an aggressively flatulent pug named Rupert, yet still finds time to be a control freak.

Caution is advised in contacting Susan at s.maushart@curtin.edu.au

More about the books:
In 1994, Susan's first book, Sort of a Place Like Home , a history of the Moore River Native Settlement, won the Festival Prize for Literature (non-fiction) at the Adelaide Writers Festival. Her second book, the bestselling The Mask of Motherhood , was hailed by the Sunday Times of London as “a feminist classic.” Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women , was described by Publisher's Weekly as “smart, witty and 100% honest” and went on to start arguments in seven languages. Susan's latest book, What Women Want Next, looks at the question of feminine fulfilment in a postfeminist world … among other outlandish propositions.

Jane Kenway

Mothers, Daughters and Family Violence: Mourning, Melancholia and Moving On

Abstract

Over twenty years ago two young girls left home and school, one was twelve, the other fifteen.  One ran away from a sexually abusive family, the other escaped a harsh and joyless household.  With enormous difficulty they remade their lives.  They both now have daughters and these fourteen year old girls are in trouble at home and school.  One has been sexually abused and has threatened suicide at school and the other has become withdrawn and violent.  Neither is expected to stay at school much longer.  How do mothers and daughters deal with this situation?  This paper shares two mothers' endurance narratives and shows how these narratives shape the ways in which they raise their daughters and try to come to terms with the troubles their daughters experience.  It also shares the daughters' stories.  The paper draws on Freud's notions of melancholia and subsequent re-readings of it to help explain the intergenerational dynamics between mothers and daughters who lead such arduous lives.  In particular it shows how such ideas shed fresh light on the reproduction and disruption of gender, violence and family turmoil across the generations.  Overall, the paper signals some possible alternative ways of thinking about educational responses to addressing such issues.

Bio

Jane Kenway is Professor of Education and Associate Dean (Research) in the Education Faculty at Monash University. Her research expertise is in cultural sociology and educational change. Her latest books in press are Masculinity Beyond the Metropolis (with Kraack and Hickey Moody) to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006 and Haunting the Knowledge Economy (with Bullen, Fahey and Robb) also to be published in 2006 in Routledge's International Library of Sociology 20. Her latest edited books include Innovation and Tradition: the Arts and Humanities in the Knowledge Economy (with Bullen and Robb) and also Globalising Education: policies, pedagogies and politics (with Apple and Singe) both with Peter Lang. Another recent book published by Open University Press in 2001 is called Consuming Children: Education-Advertising-Entertainment (with Bullen). Her books in progress include Globalsing the Research Imagination (with Fahey) and Haunting the School Curriculum: The Ghosts of the Past, Present and Future

Jill Blackmore

Audit or network cultures: competing discourses and demands for educational leadership?

Abstract

Educational leaders now confront competing discursive demands of audit and network cultures, the post- bureaucratic dimensions of educational policy. How do we understand what this means for educational leadership? How are women as leaders being repositioned (yet again), and what strategies can we pursue individually and collectively?

Bio

Dr Jill Blackmore is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education, Deakin University. She is past president of the Australian Association of Research in Education(2002) , past Managing Editor of the Australian Educational Researcher and is currently Regional Editor of International Journal of Educational Leadership , on the International Board for the British Educational Research Journal and member of editorial panels of Globalisation, Societies, Education, The Practitioner Research Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration and Foundations. She undertakes significant professional development work with professional and community organizations(principal, teacher and parent groups) as well as consultancies with government, NGOs (eg Victorian Council of Social Services, Oxfam International) and local community organizations ( eg president or member of school councils,). She is on the Victorian Curriculum Committee of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Her main research interests are in feminist approaches to globalisation and education policy, administrative and organisational theory, educational leadership and reform, organisational change and innovation, teachers' and academics' work, and all their policy implications from a feminist perspective. Publications include Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership and Educational Change (1999, Open University Press), Answering Back with Jan Kenway, Sue Willis and Leonie Rennie (1998). Forthcoming publications include a co-authored book with Judyth Sachs called Performing and Re-forming Leaders: gender, educational restructuring and organisational change with SUNY Press and an edited collection with Jan Wright Quality and Educational Research for the AARE.

Jackie Holt

If you can't handle the heat …. questioning the accepted culture of long hours.

Abstract

Whether we hate or love what we do, the undeniable truth is that in spite of labour-saving technology we are now working longer and harder than ever before. This is ironic, as in the 1970's we were told to prepare for the increased leisure time that the automation revolution would bring. Not only has this increased leisure time not materialized, research shows that leisure time has decreased by up an average of 40% in western countries.

In fact, Australians now work on average, the longest hours of Western countries. There is an assumption that long hours equals hard work; that hard work equals high performance and that if you are well paid for that work, well.. you should just put up with the work place culture. However, emerging research shows that working over a certain number of hours per week leads to fatigue and performance reduction. While short term sacrifices at times may be necessary, dangers arise when it becomes a way of life. This presentation will present ways in which participants can identify internal and external factors that contribute to their own working hours.

Bio

Dr Jackie Holt (PhD; MStudEd; Di p PHC; BEd) is the Director of a boutique company that specializes in strategies for personal and professional well being.

Studying, working full time, running a small business and being a mother of a blended family means that Jackie has had lots (and lots!) of opportunities to practice what she speaks about.

In addition to her personal experience, Jackie's doctorate focused on identifying effective strategies to reduce psychological distress amongst GPs and to assist them to identify ways to create work/life balance. Based on the success of this program, Jackie has been recruited to work with a range of professionals including school leaders, lawyers, business managers and owners and administrators.

She is also the author of several training programs in the areas of work/life balance and stress management and has recently had her book published; “From Chaos to Calm: Self Management Strategies for Work/Life Balance” as well as a chapter in ‘Balance: real life strategies for work/life balance.”